Ubuntu Desktop developing team at GUADEC 2017 in Manchester discussed the possibilities of a better Gnome Shell Desktop Environment migrations to the default release of Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) along with Wayland as the default Display server to the upcoming release.

Unity user interface has been used for awhile on the earlier releases of Ubuntu and Ubuntu Desktop team announced earlier the transition from Unity to Gnome Shell Desktop Environment. It considered being used on Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) and the upcoming long term support release Ubuntu 18.04 as well.

Usually, users are looking for Gnome Shell extension because of the lack of some features on the default Gnome Shell Desktop. In June 2017 Desktop team was looking for user opinions who currently use Ubuntu with Gnome Shell Desktop. The survey was intended to help Ubuntu Desktop team in the development of the upcoming release Ubuntu Artful and what features users prefer to have on Gnome Shell desktop.

With the considerations of the popularity of some Gnome Shell extensions such as (Dash to Dock, Better volume indicator, Top icons Plus, Alternate Tab, Applications Menu, and Impatience). Ubuntu Desktop team are willing to include new features to be available by default on Gnome Shell without interfering with the possibility to add more Gnome Shell extensions as you see fit your daily usage. So, don’t expect to have the Unity user experience in the upcoming release.

Wayland Display Server for Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark)

Wayland is coming to be the default display server on Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) with the availability of X.Org as well for backward compatibility. This is a good approach to test the possibility of using Wayland on the upcoming long term support release Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.